98 Glacial boot up [Archive]

MelGrahm

02-09-2001, 12:23 PM

I have a gateway solo 1100 laptop with Win 98 SE on it. I have always had various problems with this laptop (I thought it was the laptop, but had the whole thing replaced and it reacts the same), the main annoyance being that it takes about 3-5 minutes to boot up. I have added 64 Megs of Ram thinking that maybe it needed it, but it is the same. I have tried removing all, and then various, programs from the start up, but again it is the same. I run routine maintenance (Scan disk, defrag, getting rid of temp files) often, again with no results. I had used Nortan Utilities at one point hoping I could make it run more efficent, however it crashed the system and I had to do a reformat. (So there is a clean install of 98 on there - not using the Gateway restoration or recovery, for I hate all the extra "stuff" they add). Basically, I am stumped. (Any information would be appreciated!)

Mel!

reboot

02-09-2001, 12:39 PM

Does it have a built in LAN (NIC) card? Is it on a network?
If it does have a NIC, disable it. If you're on a network, and you need it, then live with it.
If that doesn't apply, just what processor is in that machine?
Is caching enabled in BIOS?
Is the L2 cache burned out maybe?
Fishing in the dark...

MelGrahm

02-09-2001, 01:15 PM

I am not on a network. I do have a LAN card, but that has only been installed recently for DSL. There is no difference from before I had the LAN card until now. It has always booted slowly. The processor is a Intel Celeron 466 (Which beats out my desktop @ 450MHz, and that boots fine).

I looked in the BIOS for the L2 Cache and could not find a trace of it. I did see that is coming up on the initial boot up screen (128 of L2 cache), so I assume it is enabled. I would assume that there is nothing wrong with the laptop since it is about 4 months old (it is the second new one I have gotten because the first one had the same problems - something in the design, maybe?).

Thank you for the advice, though. (If it is any help, the longest portion of the wait is on the Windows 98 screen. once I can see the desktop, I can move around and be fine. This has always been so.).

reboot

02-09-2001, 01:55 PM

I'll bet your ISP is using DHCP for static IP.
If that's the case there's nothing you can do about it.
You could try a few speed tricks, there's one article I wrote about it at http://www.pcmech.com/article.htm?tocache
Did you see if caching is enabled in BIOS? Not L2 specifically, but BIOS and Video caching?
Is the boot sequence set to C first, or A, CDROM, then C?